South Sudan has emerged as one of the most lucrative countries in the East African region, where Kenyan banks are expanding into to take advantage of low penetration of financial services.

It accounted for 47 per cent of the profits, followed by Tanzania at 31 per cent and Uganda at 12.5 per cent.

This comes despite Kenyan banks having increasingly focused on Uganda, which had 125 branches of the subsidiaries in 2012. South Sudan had 31 branches.

CBA has 22 branches in Kenya, 12 in Tanzania and is pursuing the financial supermarket model that involves issuing loans, steering deals and selling shares.

Besides the bank, it has an investment banking arm dubbed CBA Capital and last year received stockbrokerage licence to allow it directly trade shares for clients at the Nairobi Securities Exchange.

A number of companies associated with the Kenyatta family have been on an expansion mode in recent months. The business empire has in recent months made fresh bets in the hospitality, dairy, media and banking sectors.

Besides CBA, high-end Heritage Hotels, Brookside and Mediamax Group — which owns K24 TV, Kameme Radio and The People newspaper— top the list of Kenyatta’s business empire that are revamping their operations.